The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (28 page)

Aussie utility all-rounder Greg Mathews was awarded Man of the Match for his part in triggering the collapse. Another Mathew took a matchbag of 8–70, but received no mention by virtue of being on the losing side. It was the last game ever to be played at the Tyronne Cooray Stadium.

Ari trawls through hour upon hour of spool recordings, while Jabir stands by a broken-down Ford and looks at his watch. I am unable to be of much help as I cannot decipher anything aside from static and crackles.

‘This was from one of the recordings titled “Canteen/Bar”,’ says Ari. ‘Can you recognise the voices?’

De Kretser had mics in the scoreboard, the dressing rooms, the canteen bar and beneath the stumps. Last year, Jabir had assisted with rewiring them.

I am made to sit down in this air-conditioned garage and listen while Ari fiddles with screwdrivers. After hours of audio torture, we finally find something intelligible. Two voices. Both deep, both crude, one familiar, one not.

Loose tape knocks the side of the machine. My ears feel like popping.

‘Don’t you recognise the voices?’ asks Ari.

‘Yes I do. They both belong to you.’

Ari has far too much time on his hands and a wonderful imagination. Bless the old fool.

It is important to reconstruct the events of Christmas and Boxing Day 1989, because they help answer two minor questions. Why the usually passive, shy Mathew lost his temper over the needlings of a Yorkshireman. And how he managed to end 1989 with the USLA New Year Queen as his new girlfriend.

In ’89, Charith Silva shared the reserves bench with three lions or singhas, Hathurusinghe, Madurusinghe and Ranasinghe, and was yet to play his first test. Unlike other former Sri Lankan sportsmen I talk to, he does not give me excuses as to why he only played a handful of games for Sri Lanka.

‘I didn’t have the pace or the fire. And I wasn’t very accurate. Don’t put that in the article. Now I’m good. Pradeep told me not to bowl at the batsman, but to bowl at the mistake you want the batsman to make.’

The courtship of the USLA Queen took place over three nights: Christmas, Boxing and 31 December.

‘That Shirali was going out with some Aussie dude. She was looking to be with a cricketer. Not a reserve.’

I.E. Kugarajah, who I will introduce you to soon enough, has a different view. ‘I don’t think she knew a ball about cricket. And she didn’t need the money. I think she liked him because he was different. But I told him, forget looks, money, all are bullshit. To get women, you need to be strong. Finally he listened to me.’

Charith remembers his room-mate as messy and incurably lazy. ‘On that tour he changed. I think all because of this girl. He stopped wearing batik shirts and rubber slippers. Was wearing Nike and Reebok. I don’t know from where the money.’

When he wasn’t bowling in the nets, Pradeep would be in his room watching cartoons or on the phone with a girl. But he would also disappear during certain evenings.

‘That Shirali Fernando. Big fight after that poem business. I also didn’t get to sleep.’

Charith cannot remember the details of this one-sided conversation, just that it began with Pradeep swearing and ended with them agreeing to just be friends.

Later Pradeep was seen sipping gin and lemonade and chatting to some of the prettier Bharathanatyam dancers at the East Melbourne Lions’ Club Christmas party. ‘I didn’t even know that the bugger took liquor,’ says Charith. ‘These girls were drunk, easy to get. Even for us losers.’

The girls looked in their teens and called themselves the Sri Lankan United Tamil Sisters. ‘We’re the SLUTS and we’re looking for a nice Tamil boy to corrupt,’ slurred one of them.

Then Shirali arrived and Pradeep politely told the girls that they were meeting friends.

‘Bloody fool,’ says Charith. ‘We could’ve had those sluts, but Pradeep obviously still had hopes.’

The crowd was a mixture of aunties, uncles and accents all in their Sunday best. The important and the beautiful flock around the big-name cricketers. Charith and Pradeep flock around Shirali and her group. To Charith, two things were clear. That Shirali had no interest in Pradeep other than as a little brother to bully. That Mathew could not handle his alcohol.

The Christmas Princess was crowned and it was Bronwyn Jones, friend of Shirali. A blonde Melbourne lass wearing a Kandyan sari. The protests from the crowd were good-natured and loud.

‘Ado, why? Can’t give one of our girls?’

‘Why you’re giving to a suddhi?’

‘Machang, even at our own party, Aussies are thrashing us!’

According to Charith, while Bronwyn was undoubtedly sexy, the hottest BYT at the party was Shirali’s other friend, Roshani Junkeer, a cleavage-flaunting vixen who sounded more Australian than the white girl.

‘Who’s the dark, handsome spunk, Shirls?’

Shirali introduced Pradeep to her friend and banter flowed. An hour later, after the GenCY delivered an after-dinner speech, Pradeep invited Charith to check out the Melbourne nightlife with Shirali, Bronwyn and Roshani. It was the first and probably last time that Charith left a party early with three women. He enjoyed the moment. ‘All the seniors were looking at us. You should’ve seen Ravi de Mel’s face. Like a pittu.’

The five of them scrambled into a taxi before team management could come to rain on proceedings by invoking the alcohol, drugs and sex ban (Item 3 on the Tour Rules). On the way, Shirali talked about how they were going to meet a guy called Larry who she thought was cute. Pradeep ignored Roshani, who was edging onto his lap with a stolen bottle of wine, while the Christmas Princess rubbed her bosom against Charith’s arm.

‘Uncle, I am not a fellow to cheat on my wife, no? Otherwise how many women I could’ve had?’

I look at Charith Silva’s belly, man breasts and tennis ball haircut, and nod sympathetically.

They met this Larry character and decided to go and see the 10 o’clock showing of
Crocodile Dundee 2.
They were evicted twenty minutes into the movie when Roshani regurgitated her wine down the aisle. As they giggled their way out, the Samoan manager said, ‘In this country, we don’t go to cinemas drunk.’

By the time they got to the Bar Bodega and ordered tequila shots, Larry was holding Shirali’s hand. Charith’s descriptions of the gallons of alcohol they consumed and the chorus line of women who approached him for sex make me wonder if his words should also be taken with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime.

‘Merv Hughes and Dean Jones also were there partying with us. One of the Aussies tried to camel Pradeep’s BYT.’

I lose track of which one was Pradeep’s BYT. ‘The local one, Roshani. She goes off with Jones. Then Bronwyn, the beauty queen, sits on the bugger’s lap. What a night!’

In the midst of proceedings, the Yorkshireman attempted to buy Bronwyn a drink. The blonde called him a ‘paedophile’ and slunk off with Pradeep. This may explain his belligerence at the next day’s post-match presentation.

While waiting for a taxi at the end of the night, Charith, Pradeep, Larry and the three girls were accosted by two drunken skinheads. Phrases like ‘curry muncher’, ‘dairy owner’, ‘a thousand apologies’, ‘nargy bitch’ and, inexplicably, ‘nigger’ were bandied about, not without malice. The night ended with the arrival of the taxi driver, but not before Charith was punched twice and Shirali spat at. Neither Larry nor Pradeep did anything.

The girls were dropped off at Shirali’s place and the two reserves sneaked back into their hotel four hours after curfew. Mathew did not say a word all the way home. Team management did not find out.

Pradeep was suspended and was due for a disciplinary hearing. While many players applauded him for telling off the Yorkshireman, senior members and management were less than impressed. No one knew of Christmas Day parties and brawls with skinheads the day before.

‘Those days, we were the poor relations. No one would grant us games. Some years, we had to train 365 days to play one test,’ laments Ravi de Mel. ‘How to show the world that we are gentlemen, worthy of the gentleman’s game, if fellows are talking like Maradana street thugs? Live on camera also. He was a typical Moratuwa thug. A tiger can’t change its spots.’

They say bowling is the brainiest part of cricket. Ravi de Mel is not an example of that. He does not hide his contempt for Pradeep. ‘I only recommended he be dropped. I don’t believe in talent. Talent is nothing without effort. Give me a humble hard worker over a talented fool.’

Charith hadn’t even heard of that day’s Yorkshireman episode and was in bed when he received a phone call from an excited and drunk-sounding Mathew.

‘Bugger was at the bar with girls. Madness, I told him. Management would massacre if we went out without leave on a match day.’

But leave without leave is what he did. He called the vice captain, saying he was unable to get through to the GenCY and the Skipper, and conveyed that both he and Pradeep were not feeling well and would be having an early dinner and resting.

At the Bar Bodega, Mathew looked like the Don. Not Bradman, but Juan. Roshani Junkeer on one arm, Bronwyn Jones on the other. There was a smattering of Sri Lankans at the bar, including Miss Sri Lanka and her date, who didn’t look like a minister, but could have been the son of one.

Shirali Fernando was leaning on the lap of her new boyfriend, a tall curly-haired Australian called Larry. ‘Charith Baba! Come drink, will you.’

The scene was good, but Charith was worried. The Bar Bodega was essentially a student bar, made to look like a working-class one. The faded pool tables, the battered jukebox, the peeling walls and the torn girly posters had been recently put in. Charith helped himself to a kiss and a squeeze from Bronwyn and Roshani and muttered to Pradeep, ‘Machang, what if those skinheads come here?’

‘Let them come,’ smiled Pradeep.

And come they did. Four of them this time, at the nearby pool table. Dark jeans, big boots, black woollen jumpers, shaven heads. One had several strands of hair at the nape of his neck. He was the one who had thrown the punches the previous night. He was the one who noticed them while taking his shot.

‘Strewth, it’s the nargy club, back for some more, eh?’

Shirali’s boyfriend got up from his stool. ‘Steady on, mate …’

All four skinheads advanced with their cues. ‘You fucking that curry bitch, mate?’

Larry pushed Shirali towards Charith and stood up to his full height. Charith drew the girls away and the other Sri Lankans at the bar looked on in horror, including Miss Sri Lanka and the boy who may have been the son of a minister.

The one with the pool cue pointed a finger in Larry’s face, which went from pink to chalk. Pradeep stepped into the fray and stared up at the four men with little hair. The barman noticed and looked frantically for the bouncer. He spied him. Holding a pool cue with three of his mates, threatening a group of Asians.

I apologise for the language that follows. But this is the only bit of the story that Charith remembers word for word.

Pradeep employed his gruffest street urchin snarl. ‘You guys are homos. You shave your heads because your dicks are too small, when you fuck each other.’

At first stunned silence, then a ripple of laughter wet the bar. What else? A skinny brown boy, standing behind a terrified white boy, questioning the sexuality of four stick-wielding, muscle-bound Nazis. If there was to be blood, and at that moment it looked a certainty that there would be, why not enjoy a moment of misplaced comedy?

‘How did you end up like this? Your unemployed father raped you and dressed you up like a girl.’ Mathew appeared to have practised his speech.

The leader took a while to process what was taking place. He shook his head. ‘You smelly fucking curry …’

Mathew cut him off. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t bathe, can’t get a job, can’t get a woman, can’t …’

And then the smash and then the crash and the glass breaking over the head and the kicks and the punches and the shouted curses.

‘I don’t know where the bugger came from. I think he was with the Miss Sri Lanka crowd. He was dark and big and had a moustache. Looked like Prabhakaran himself.’